Durham, North Carolina-based Bioventus LLC, a global orthobiologic solutions company, and Edison, New Jersey-based MTF Biologics, the world’s largest tissue bank, announced a co-development agreement which will create a next generation placental tissue product to treat musculoskeletal conditions.
The initial focus of the partnership will be on knee osteoarthritis (OA).
“Bioventus is an orthobiologics company that delivers clinically proven, cost-effective products that help people heal quickly and safely. Its mission is to make a difference by helping patients resume and enjoy active lives. Bioventus offers a range of orthobiologic products, including solutions for osteoarthritis, surgical and non-surgical bone healing.”
MTF Biologics, or the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, “is a nonprofit consortium of leading organ procurement organizations, tissue recovery organizations, and academic medical institutions….It is governed by a board of surgeons who are leaders in the field of tissue transplantation.”
Founded in 1987, MTF Biologics is now the world’s largest tissue bank. “The organization has received tissue from more than 132,000 donors and distributed more than 8.6 million grafts for transplantation. Through its IIAM [International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine] subsidiary, it has placed more than 58,000 non-transplantable organs for research. Through its Statline subsidiary, MTF Biologics has managed more than 11.3 million donor referrals.”
CEO of Bioventus, Tony Bihl, said of the partnership, “Development of new orthobiologics offerings for osteoarthritis is a core focus for Bioventus and we are pleased to begin collaborating with MTF Biologics on a solution for knee OA that will offer symptom relief and potentially delay progression of the disease.”
Bihl told OTW that the collaboration “provides the opportunity to add an injectable formulation of placental tissues to our portfolio of non-surgical treatments of osteoarthritis for patients that delay or possibly even eliminate the need for total knee replacements. Placental tissues hold great promise in this regard because they are naturally rich in a wide array of growth factors and regulatory molecules that can beneficially impact OA symptoms (such as pain and limited mobility) while potentially delaying the progression of the disease.”
Bihl explained how the collaboration will work. “Members of our R&D team have been collaborating with MTF since Q3 of 2018. We expect co-development work will continue and we will test the early knee OA product in our new lab space in Durham until it is ready for clinical studies. As the program develops over the next few months more team members from marketing, clinical operations and medical affairs will become more actively involved.”
“In our search for the right partner, we evaluated dozens of companies and multiple tissue banks. In the end, we found MTF offered the best partnering characteristics. Not only is MTF the largest tissue bank in the world, they also have over 30 years of experience bringing safe tissue products to the market to help patients heal. Furthermore, we chose them based-upon their experience and network for sourcing tissues effectively (engaging with donors and harvesting tissue during healthy c-section births), and their track record developing/manufacturing a range of quality tissue allograft products. These traits, combined with a mutual commitment to this long-term partnership made MTF the right choice for Bioventus.”
Joe Yaccarino, president and CEO of MTF Biologics, said, “MTF Biologics is excited to begin working with Bioventus to bring this new solution to market…. Through this relationship we expect to co-develop and deliver innovative biologic products for orthopaedics to patients and physicians.”
